Novocortex used guerrilla marketing tactics to build brand awareness for VrijVerzekerd, a Dutch online insurance company. We placed stickers with huge scratches on expensive cars. Stickers could be easily removed, because they were printed on Static Paper. This paper has no glue on it and sticks due to static electricity. We filmed reactions of car owners with a hidden camera, placed the video on YouTube and invited blog readers to test the stickers on their friends.

01 Solution – guerrilla marketing + static paper

Our objective was to build brand awareness for VrijVerzekerd, a Dutch car insurance company. And to tell how fast and easy their damage repair service is. Without a media budget. Novocortex decided to use guerrilla marketing tactics. We placed stickers with scratches on expensive cars in large cities. Scratches were printed on static paper, a low-tech innovation in Print advertising. Static paper sticks because it’s charged with static electricity. It has no glue on it, so the sticker can be easily removed. When you get closer to the car, you can read the sticker text: “Repairing your damages can be as easy as removing this sticker. Insure your car on VrijVerzekerd.nl and get a discount of 10-49%”.

02 Strategy – engagement

Novocortex filmed reactions of car owners with a hidden camera, placed the video on YouTube and sent a link to marketing and car weblogs. We invited blog readers to test the removable stickers on their colleagues and friends (to share the fun and because we love co-creation and crowdsourcing).

03 Results

– The video got about 10.000 views in its first month and achieved #29 in the YouTube ranking for the Most Viewed Humour Videos in the Netherlands (note: we never hid that it was an insurance ad). The hidden camera video has over 100.000 views now. Plus, our video about this guerrilla marketing campaign has 90.000 views.
– Our invitation to test stickers on your friends was published by about 20 blogs and online communities in the Netherlands and Belgium.
– The daily traffic on VrijVerzekerd.nl was 3 times higher than before the campagn, and the average time spent by visitors on the site increased by 20%.
– We ran out of stickers in two days. The stickers were spread by blog readers who wanted to play a practical joke on their friends, colleagues and even relatives.

These are examples of e-mails sent to us:
– “Great idea! I’d like to receive a couple of stickers. I want to see faces of my neighbours washing their cars on the street…”
– “My father is a car addict. He will be 55 soon, and I would like to surprise him in a playful way.”
– “Could you please send me your stickers, so I can place them on wrongly parked cars in my street?”
– “Our colleague will get a new lease car tomorrow. We thought it would be nice if his car got scratches on the very first day.”